This work presents an ultra-low-voltage ultra-low-power weak inversion composite MOS transistor. The steady state power consumption and the linear swing signal of the composite transistor are comparable to a single transistor, whereas presenting very high output impedance. This work also presents two interesting applications for the composite transistor; a 1:1 current mirror and an extremely low power temperature sensor, a thermistor. Both implementations are verified in a standard 0.35-µm TSMC CMOS process. The current mirror presents high output impedance, comparable to the cascode configuration, which is highly desirable to improve gain and PSRR of amplifiers circuits, and mirroring relation in current mirrors.

Further development of a network based on the Inverse Function Delayed (ID) model which can recall temporal sequences of patterns, is proposed. Additional advantage is taken of the negative resistance region of the ID model and its hysteretic properties by widening the negative resistance region and letting the output of the ID neuron be almost instant. Calling this neuron limit ID neuron, a model with limit ID neurons connected pairwise with conventional neurons enlarges the storage capacity and increases it even further by using a weightmatrix that is calculated to guarantee the storage after transforming the sequence of patterns into a linear separation problem. The network's tolerance, or the model's ability to recall a sequence, starting in a pattern with initial distortion is also investigated and by choosing a suitable value for the output delay of the conventional neuron, the distortion is gradually reduced and finally vanishes.

Motion-compensated frame interpolation (MCFI) is widely used to smoothly display low frame rate video sequences by synthesizing and inserting new frames between existing frames. The temporal shift interpolation technique (TSIT) is popular for frame interpolation of video sequences that are encoded by a block-based video coding standard such as MPEG-4 or H.264/AVC. TSIT assumes the existence of a motion vector (MV) and may not result in high-quality interpolation for intra-mode blocks that do not have MVs. This paper proposes a new frame interpolation algorithm mainly designed for intra-mode blocks. In order to improve the accuracy of pixel interpolation, the new algorithm proposes sub-pixel interpolation and the reuse of MVs for their refinement. In addition, the new algorithm employs two different interpolation modes for inter-mode blocks and intra-mode blocks, respectively. The use of the two modes reduces ghost artifacts but potentially increases blocking effects between the blocks interpolated by different modes. To reduce blocking effects, the proposed algorithm searches the boundary of an object and interpolates all blocks in the object in the same mode. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm improves PSNR by an average of 0.71 dB compared with the TSIT with MV refinement and also significantly improves the subjective quality of pictures by reducing ghost artifacts.

In this paper, we propose a design for testability method for test programs of software-based self-test using test program templates. Software-based self-test using templates has a problem of error masking where some faults detected in a test generation for a module are not detected by the test program synthesized from the test. The proposed method achieves 100% template level fault efficiency, that is, it completely avoids the error masking. Moreover, the proposed method has no performance degradation (adds only observation points) and enables at-speed testing.

The author developed a GaAs wideband IQ modulator IC, which is utilized in RF signal source instruments with direct-conversion architecture. The layout is fully symmetric to obtain a temperature-stable operation. However, the actual temperature drift of EVM (Error Vector Magnitude) is greater in some frequency and temperature ranges than the first generation IC of the same architecture. For applications requiring the precision of electric instrumentation, temperature drift is highly critical. This paper clarifies that linear phase error is the dominant factor causing the temperature drift. It also identifies that such temperature drift of linear phase error is due to equivalent series impedance, especially parasitic capacitance of the phase shifter. This effect is verified by comparing the SSB measurements to a mathematical simulation using an empirical temperature-dependent small-signal FET model.

We have attempted to recognize reverberant speech using a novel speech recognition system that depends on not only the spectral envelope and amplitude modulation but also frequency modulation. Most of the features used by modern speech recognition systems, such as MFCC, PLP, and TRAPS, are derived from the energy envelopes of narrowband signals by discarding the information in the carrier signals. However, some experiments show that apart from the spectral/time envelope and its modulation, the information on the zero-crossing points of the carrier signals also plays a significant role in human speech recognition. In realistic environments, a feature that depends on the limited properties of the signal may easily be corrupted. In order to utilize an automatic speech recognizer in an unknown environment, using the information obtained from other signal properties and combining them is important to minimize the effects of the environment. In this paper, we propose a method to analyze carrier signals that are discarded in most of the speech recognition systems. Our system consists of two nonlinear discriminant analyzers that use multilayer perceptrons. One of the nonlinear discriminant analyzers is HATS, which can capture the amplitude modulation of narrowband signals efficiently. The other nonlinear discriminant analyzer is a pseudo-instantaneous frequency analyzer proposed in this paper. This analyzer can capture the frequency modulation of narrowband signals efficiently. The combination of these two analyzers is performed by the method based on the entropy of the feature introduced by Okawa et al. In this paper, in Sect. 2, we first introduce pseudo-instantaneous frequencies to capture a property of the carrier signal. The previous AM analysis method are described in Sect. 3. The proposed system is described in Sect. 4. The experimental setup is presented in Sect. 5, and the results are discussed in Sect. 6. We evaluate the performance of the proposed method by continuous digit recognition of reverberant speech. The proposed system exhibits considerable improvement with regard to the MFCC feature extraction system.

In optical burst switching (OBS) networks, burst with different numbers of hops experience unfairness in terms of the burst loss probability. In this paper, we propose a preemptive scheme based on the number of transit hops in OBS networks. In our proposed scheme, preemption is performed with two thresholds; one is for the total number of hops of a burst and the other is for the number of transit hops the burst has passed through. We evaluate the performance of the scheme by simulation, and numerical examples show that the proposed scheme improves the fairness among the bursts with different numbers of hops, keeping the overall burst loss probability the same as that for the conventional OBS transmission without preemption.

We have developed the fabrication process, the circuit design technology, and the cryopackaging technology for high-Tc single flux quantum (SFQ) devices with the aim of application to an analog-to-digital (A/D) converter circuit for future wireless communication and a sampler system for high-speed measurements. Reproducibility of fabricating ramp-edge Josephson junctions with IcRn products above 1 mV at 40 K and small Ic spreads on a superconducting groundplane was much improved by employing smooth multilayer structures and optimizing the junction fabrication process. The separated base-electrode layout (SBL) method that suppresses the Jc spread for interface-modified junctions in circuits was developed. This method enabled low-frequency logic operations of various elementary SFQ circuits with relatively wide bias current margins and operation of a toggle-flip-flop (T-FF) above 200 GHz at 40 K. Operation of a 1:2 demultiplexer, one of main elements of a hybrid-type Σ-Δ A/D converter circuit, was also demonstrated. We developed a sampler system in which a sampler circuit with a potential bandwidth over 100 GHz was cooled by a compact stirling cooler, and waveform observation experiments confirmed the actual system bandwidth well over 50 GHz.

A method for extracting a sound signal from a particular area that is surrounded by multiple ambient noise sources is proposed. This method performs several fixed beamformings on a pair of small microphone arrays separated from each other to estimate the signal and noise power spectra. Noise suppression is achieved by applying spectrum emphasis to the output of fixed beamforming in the frequency domain, which is derived from the estimated power spectra. In experiments performed in a room with reverberation, this method succeeded in suppressing the ambient noise, giving an SNR improvement of more than 10 dB, which is better than the performance of the conventional fixed and adaptive beamforming methods using a large-aperture microphone array. We also confirmed that this method keeps its performance even if the noise source location changes continuously or abruptly.

Extracting frequently executed (hot) portions of the application and executing their corresponding data flow graph (DFG) on the hardware accelerator brings about more speedup and energy saving for embedded systems comprising a base processor integrated with a tightly coupled accelerator. Extending DFGs to support control instructions and using Control DFGs (CDFGs) instead of DFGs results in more coverage of application code portion are being accelerated hence, more speedup and energy saving. In this paper, motivations for extending DFGs to CDFGs and handling control instructions are introduced. In addition, basic requirements for an accelerator with conditional execution support are proposed. Then, two algorithms are presented for temporal partitioning of CDFGs considering the target accelerator architectural constraints. To demonstrate effectiveness of the proposed ideas, they are applied to the accelerator of a reconfigurable processor called AMBER. Experimental results approve the remarkable effectiveness of covering control instructions and using CDFGs versus DFGs in the aspects of performance and energy reduction.

In these days, many dynamically reconfigurable architectures have been introduced to fill the gap between ASICs and software-programmed processors such as GPPs and DSPs. These reconfigurable architectures have shown to achieve higher performance compared to software-programmed processors. However, reconfigurable architectures suffer from a significant reconfiguration overhead and a speedup limitation. By reducing the reconfiguration overhead, the overall performance of reconfigurable architectures can be improved. Therefore, we will describe temporal partitioning, which are able to amortize the reconfiguration overhead at synthesis phase or compilation time. Our temporal partitioning methodology splits a configuration context into temporal partitions to amortize reconfiguration overhead. And then, we will present benchmark results to demonstrate the effectiveness of our methodology.

Ziv-Lempel incremental parsing [1] is a fundamental algorithm for lossless data compression. There is a simple enumerative implementation [7] which preserves a duality between the encoder and the decoder. However, due to its compactness, the implementation when combined with a complete integer code, allows only an input sequence with a length consistent with the parsing boundaries. In this letter, we propose a simple additional mechanism for post-processing a binary file of arbitrary length, provided the file punctuation is externally managed.

This paper presents a mathematically simple method of maximum SINR (Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio) design of broadband MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) communication systems adopting TDL (Tapped Delay Line) structure for spatio-temporal processing in both transmitter and receiver sides. The weight vectors in both ends are determined alternately, optimizing one side by fixing the other, and this operation is repeated until the SINR converges. The performance of MIMO systems using the proposed approach is investigated through computer simulations, and it is demonstrated that, though it requires high computational cost, the TDL structure brings high ability to mitigate the influence of frequency selective fading, particularly when the duration of the delay profile is long. Moreover, experimental results show that the equable distribution of the resources (weights and delay units) to both arrays is better choice than the concentration of them to one side of the transmitter or receiver.

From lessons learned in medical data mining projects we show that integration of advanced computation techniques and human inspection is indispensable in medical data mining. We proposed an integrated approach that merges data mining and text mining methods plus visualization support for expert evaluation. We also appropriately developed temporal abstraction and text mining methods to exploit the collected data. Furthermore, our visual discovery system D2MS allowed to actively and effectively working with physicians. Significant findings in hepatitis study were obtained by the integrated approach.

Employee performance appraisal is an effective way to determine the performance of the employees in an organization. A study conducted on companies in Thailand revealed that majority of the companies do not use computer-based employee appraisal system. In the traditional appraisal system, the paper-based appraisal system causes a lot of manual work, is time-consuming, not secure, not flexible, difficult to analyze the performance and see the trend of performance improvement of the employee. We have developed a web-based performance appraisal system, which provides a secure and easy way to perform the appraisal. In our system, the competencies are flexible and can be customized according to the specific job responsibility. Our system is goal-orientated as it calculates the objective scores. The system is connected to the database which is easily accessible. The first stage of our system is the 'Selection Stage' in which the managers and employees can select the competencies and objectives that they want to evaluate for performance appraisal according to the job positions. The second stage is the 'Appraisal/Evaluation Stage' where managers can rate the employees according to different priority levels of competencies and objectives. Moreover, at this stage, employees can perform self-evaluation and 360-degree evaluation for their colleagues, subordinates and managers. The final stage is the 'Development Planning Stage' where the managers and employees can compare their appraisal results, discuss and plan for future training or further steps for reaching the objectives and improving employee's competencies. From user testing, the system was found to be more efficient compared to the traditional appraisal system in the issues like: help evaluate the true abilities of employees, help employees understand organizational goals, and provide fast and effective feedback. The users found the system easy to understand and use and were more satisfied with the overall effectiveness of the system.

Accurate values for occurrence probabilities of the template used in the overlapping template matching test included in NIST randomness test suite (NIST SP800-22) have been analyzed. The inaccurate values used in the NIST randomness test suite cause significant difference of pass rate. When the inaccurate values are used and significance level is set to 1%, the experimental mean value of pass rate, which is calculated by use of random number sequences taken from DES (Data Encryption Standard), is about 98.8%. In contrast, our new values derived from a set of recurrence formulas for the NIST randomness test suite give an empirical distribution of pass rate that meets the theoretical binomial distribution. Here, the experimental mean value of pass rate is about 99%, which corresponds to the significance level 1%.

Due to the continuous growth of wireless communication technology and mobile equipment, the history management of moving object is important in a wide range of location-based applications. To process queries for history data, trajectories, we generally use trajectory-preserving index schemes based on the trajectory preservation property. This property means that a leaf node only contains segments belonging to a particular trajectory, regardless of the spatiotemporal locality of segments. The sacrifice of spatiotemporal locality, however, causes the index to increase the dead space of MBBs of non-leaf nodes and the overlap between the MBBs of nodes. Therefore, an index scheme for trajectories shows good performance with trajectory-based queries, but not with coordinate-based queries, such as range queries. We propose new index schemes that improve the performance of range queries without reducing performance with trajectory based queries.

DTW-based text-dependent speaker verification technology is an effective scheme for protecting personal information in personal electronic products from others. To enhance the performance of a DTW-based system, an impostor database covering all possible passwords is generally required for the matching scores normalization. However, it becomes impossible in our practical application scenario since users are not restricted in their choice of password. We propose a method to generate pseudo-impostor data by employing an acoustic codebook. Based on the pseudo-impostor data, two normalization algorithms are developed. Besides, a template compression approach based on the codebook is introduced. Some modifications to the conventional DTW global constraints are also made for the compressed template. Combining the normalization and template compression methods, we obtain more than 66% and 35% relative reduction in storage and EER, respectively. We expect that other DTW-based tasks may also benefit from our methods.

A novel type Brillouin optical time-domain analysis (BOTDA), called double-pulse BOTDA (DP-BOTDA), is proposed for measuring distributed strain and temperature in a fiber with a centimeter spatial resolution. The DP-BOTDA system transmits a double-pulsed light instead of a conventional single-pulsed light into a fiber to interact with a counter-propagating continuous-wave light through the induced acoustic wave in the fiber. The interference between acoustic waves induced by the front and rear pulses of the double-pulsed light produces broad but oscillatory Brillouin gain spectra that make it possible to measure the Brillouin frequency shift accurately despite the very narrow pulse width. Our numerical simulation, which includes an estimation of the signal-to-noise ratio of the system, shows that it is possible to measure the distributed Brillouin frequency shift with a spatial resolution of 4 cm and accuracies of 1-2 MHz for a 5-km long fiber.

In this paper, a method of separating the effects of the thermal diffusivity, durations and integral powers of the bridge and arc on the temperature rise of AgPd contacts was proposed. First, the effects of the Pd content on the durations and integral powers of the bridge and arc, and the temperature rise of the contacts were discussed. Because the integral power of bridge was larger than that of the arc under our experimental conditions of 40 V open-circuit, 5 A close-circuit and 100 µm/s opening velocity, the temperature rise of the contacts was dominated by the bridge. No remarked difference in bridge duration can be seen among the six materials. Although the integral power of the bridge in the case of Pd was maximum, the maximum temperature rise of the contact was observed in the case of AgPd60. To clarify the contribution of each factor, the effect of thermal diffusivity on the temperature rise of the contact was evaluated by the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. In the case of Pd, because its thermal diffusivity was largest, heat diffused rapidly. On the other hand, the thermal diffusivity in the case of AgPd60 was small, and heat diffused slowly to the holders. The maximum temperature rise was observed in the case of AgPd60. It was demonstrated that the proposed method of separating the effects of thermal diffusivity, durations and integral powers of the bridge and arc on the temperature rise of contacts is effective in enabling us to understand contact phenomena.